Monday, November 16, 2009

Aggressing the aggressor

Yesterday I had something funny happen to me as I was "ratting" in Low-sec Derelik; you see what I tend to do from time to time is go into Low-sec and look for possible targets by baiting them to aggress my interceptor as I chew on rats. FYI, a Taranis makes mince meat of even the Low-sec battleship spawns, and yes, I'm one of those weirdos who actually enjoy ratting once in a while just to blow shit up. Doing it in an interceptor in potentially hostile space adds a little spice though. I have to watch the directionnal scanner constantly and pay attention to Local because surprises can be nasty, but I believe in flying dangerous so that's part of the game. If you can't handle that go back to your 50-man blob, but I digress.

So I'm happily munching away on some Sansha zombies in an unoccupied system with no one but me in Local, no stations, a single POS with no ships out, and barely any traffic when suddenly Local pipes up with one person entering the system. I start d-scanning like mad and quickly find out the new arrival is in an Iteron Mk III. Tasty target but he's out of the system before I have time to do anything about it, and I'm not exactly equiped to tank gate guns. Oh well, back to "ratting". Not too long after this though the same guy comes back in the system, in a Tristan this time. Hmm... maybe he wants to play now so I stay put at my belt after another dead Sansha spawn to make my position obvious. It could be a trap, he could have buddies... yeah I know all that but The Force was telling me he's solo. Turned out I had to wait to find out because he left again. But not for long.

A few spawns later he comes back into the system, and this time a few seconds later he lands about 30km from me, and just watches me salvage my wreck. As soon as that's done I flip on the MWD and start the inward spiral, but as soon as my 'Ranis move an inch the Tristan pilot aggresses. Good of him to protect my security status, and in the next instant he finds himself scrammed, webbed and inside my ship's pain zone. Sure he turns on neuts on me, but my Warriors are eating him alive and every time the cap goes up ever so slightly I get off a shot that delivers about 300 HP damage. Barely a minute into the fight the Tristan goes kablooey, and the pod high-tails it towards the gate.

My only comment: "Bad idea... GF!"

His reply: "I need bigger cap boosters"

My reply: "You need a better ship!"

I think he thought he could neut me to death, but I also think he forgot what 2 Warrior IIs could do to a slightly tanked T1 frigate if left unattended. And the funny thing is, when he agressed me I was below 50% shields from the previous Sansha encounter so he even had a head start. And the whole time I was 100% confident in my ship and what it could do. The structure got a very slight hit and I didn't even get to see it smoke! So all in all, even if it's only a T1 frigate kill with an interceptor, the whole thing was very exciting. Some time before that fight though I thought I was going to have a bigger challenge when some 3-month old player and his Myrmidon came into the system, but he never came within sight of me. He was very talkative though so we chatted about EVE, PvP, Life, The Universe, and Everything. I'm sure a good challenge will come :)

On other news, I have bought the first replacement of my big ships as I bought a new Tempest; as it will most likely be used more in PvE it will be fit accordingly, but after getting the ship and T2 pretty much everything on it my wallet is hurting so I'll wait a bit before the rigs go on. There have been a few occasions where I've missed the ships I left in Curse, but still, I don't regret my decision. Anyway, if I would've use my old Deimos for our little HAC roam the other day I would have lost it horribly to Cry Havoc. Better to lose a T2-fit Thorax :)) Next big replacement will be the Broadsword.

And on the training front things are moving along smoothly. Si Gong is learning more and more every day and is starting to really get into the universe. Because it's my parental week I haven't done much with him as far as PvP goes, but I did show him what a wormhole was, and even warped us to a Sleeper anomaly. We weren't equipped to take 'em on so we boogied out of there before they took their first coffees :)